What T20 side wouldn’t be jealous of having Ashton Agar? He’s a lock for the Australian T20 team, with national selectors bound to further raid Scorchers’ bowling stocks just before the Big Bash final. His economy rate of 5.51 per over puts him among Big Bash royalty.

Scyld Berry, The Telegraph, 3 January 2018, where the title is “Australian Aboriginal team became cricket pioneers 150 years ago this week

Exactly 150 years ago this week, a team of cricketers were preparing in Sydney for the first sports tour by Australians, and for the first cricket tour to England. Before they set sail on Feb 8, the Duke of Edinburgh attended their practice on a couple of days, although when Queen Victoria’s second son watched cricket, he was normally not amused.

These pioneers were Aboriginal Australians. Five years earlier, they had never seen cricket, let alone played it. Yet they took to the sport with such natural dexterity that when they played MCC at Lord’s, they led on first innings and might have won if two of their players had not been injured.

The first Aboriginal cricket team outside the MCC pavilion of the Melbourne Cricket Ground -Pic fr Wikipedia

Our Murali was tormented in the Boxing Day test match at the MCG by Darrell Hair when he called Murali for “chucking” as shown in the photograph. Hair was hailed as the ultimate courageous umpire for his action which stunned the cricketing world. Hair rode high for some years until Murali was finally cleared by the ICC of having an action that was within the fifteen degree limits of bending his arm. The Sri Lanka Cricket Foundation of Victoria supported Murali through several episodes of this torment. Hemaka Amarasuriya the then President of the Sri Lanka Cricket Board arrived in Australia to lend support to us as we had Murali visit several well-known defamation lawyers in Melbourne and Brisbane.

George Dobell, courtesy of ESPNcricinfo, where the title is “Embarrassed by how West Indies played in the nineties – Lara”

Brian Lara has implored the top sides in world cricket “to ensure that the integrity of the game is upheld” and admitted there were times he was “truly embarrassed” by the behaviour of the West Indies side he represented.

Michael Holding kicks the stumps in anger Getty Images

Lara, delivering the MCC Spirt of Cricket Cowdrey lecture at Lord’s, not only called on batsmen to “walk” but suggested the leading sides had a responsibility to “show the way and lead the way” in which the game is played.And, despite the outstanding record of the West Indies sides of the 1980s and early 1990s, Lara felt they were occasions when the tactics they employed resulted in them “playing the game in a way it should never, ever be played.” Read the rest of this entry ?

Aristotle asserted that the intrinsic telos of an acorn is to become a fully-grown oak tree.[1] Kant dwelt on the concept of telos as a regulative principle, while it is said that teleology was foundational in the speculative philosophy of Hegel. Without much knowledge of these theorists’ exegesis, I nevertheless invoke them in criticizing the MCC for its failure to adhere to the principle of telos – or basic common sense – in insisting on Law 29 relating to the issue of whether a batsman has made his ground before being stumped or run out

Speaking to The Australian, Harry Solomons from Sydney’s Kingsgrove Sports Centre, who has supplied bats to everyone from Doug Walters in the 1970s to recent test captain Michael Clarke, told [us] he was selling the oversized Kaboom model of bat endorsed by Warner as recently as Monday afternoon because nobody in the cricketing community expected the MCC’s ban on power-laden equipment to extend to amateur players The biggest-selling bats we have are the biggest bats. Yesterday we were stills elling the dAve Warner Kaboom. Everyone knew the rule was coming, but not for amateurs. … It is going to be a whole new ball game in bat-making.” (Australian, 7 marhc 20170).